The country- house poem developed into a literary genre in the early decades of the seventeenth- century. Aemilia Lanyer's, `The description of Cooke- ham', and Ben Jonson's, `To Penshurst' namely represent the small genre which flourished so briefly. These poems are much more than domestic architecture and are more than simple exercises in praising and pleasing a wealthy patron and the readership at large. In country- house poetry, poets use the conjunction of the ideal family (the patron's) and the ideal site (the estate and surrounding areas in which the patron and his/her family live) as a means of reflecting on social values, the nature of the good life, and the ways in which other households fall short of the mark. The country- house poem, in other words, can be a vehicle of social criticism as well as of praise. Lanyer and Jonson celebrate great places and...